Slowly at first, but then with ever greater energy, the Bolsheviks were also regrouping. Under the indefatigable leadership of Yakov Sverdlov, a capable and cool-headed organiser from the Urals, things were quickly pulled together in Petrograd. The repression had not succeeded in destroying the party. This was no accident. The counter-revolution was still feeling its way. It was obliged to camouflage its actions by speaking in the name of the revolution and the Soviets. Even the troops who put down the July demonstration did so in the name of defending the Soviet. A drastic clampdown would have caused problems, although that is what Kerensky wanted. They were obliged to proceed with caution. Even the trials of the ‘German agents’ had to be postponed, in part for the complete lack of any real evidence. Conditions were still difficult, of course. The loss of offices and records temporarily disorganised the work: “We lost just about everything – our documents, accounts, quarters, literally everything!” a member of the Executive Committee complained. The suppression of Pravda was a serious blow, and the party was reduced to turning out leaflets on a dilapidated hand press left over from the tsarist period. Only in early August were the Bolsheviks able to resume publication of a regular organ. However, morale was quickly recovering. Sverdlov was able to telegraph party organisations in the provinces that “the mood in Piter [the colloquial name for Petrograd] is hale and hearty. We are keeping our heads. The organisation is not destroyed”. (A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come to Power, p. 62 and p. 59.)
The Bolshevik leadership met on 13-14 July to consider the change of tactics proposed by Lenin, which was badly received. Out of 15 party leaders in attendance, ten voted against. The resolution finally adopted by the Central Committee made no reference either to the end of the period of peaceful development of the revolution or to the need to prepare for an armed uprising. When Lenin found this out the next day, he was thoroughly alarmed. What did this foot-dragging mean? In his article On Slogans, he tackled head-on the tendency of his comrades to postpone revolutionary action and make concessions to the reformists. The situation had experienced a sharp turn after the July Days. The reaction was now in the saddle:
Primarily, and above all, the people must know the truth – they must know who actually wields state power. The people must be told the whole truth, namely, that power is in the hands of a military clique of Cavaignacs[4] (Kerensky, certain generals, officers, etc.), who are supported by the bourgeois class headed by the Cadet Party, and by all the monarchists, acting through the Black Hundred papers, Novoye Vremya, Zhivoye Slovo, etc., etc.
These words proved to be prophetic. The Cavaignacs of the officer caste were indeed preparing a counter-stroke. It was necessary to prepare the party and warn the masses of the impending conflict. And the Soviets? Lenin wrote:
Soviets may appear in this new revolution, and indeed are bound to, but not the present Soviets, not organs collaborating with the bourgeoisie, but organs of revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie. It is true that even then we shall be in favour of building the whole state on the model of the Soviets. It is not a question of Soviets in general, but of combating the present counter-revolution and the treachery of the present Soviets. (LCW, On Slogans, vol. 25, p. 188 and p. 189.)
At the Second City Conference, Volodarsky, who had come over with the Mezhraiontsy and played a prominent role in the Bolshevik organisation in Petrograd until his assassination by a Left SR terrorist in 1918, expressed the views of many of those present when he said:
People who claim the counter-revolution is victorious are making judgements about the masses on the basis of their leaders. While the [top Menshevik and SR] leaders are shifting rightward, the masses are moving leftward. Kerensky, Tsereteli and Avksentiev are caliphs for one hour…
The petty bourgeoisie will swing to our side. Bearing this in mind, it is clear that the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ is not obsolete.
Another delegate, Veinberg, added:
The present government won’t be able to do a thing about the economic crisis; the Soviets and political parties will swing leftward. The majority of the democracy is grouped around the Soviets and so rejecting the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ can have very harmful consequences. (Quoted in A. Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks Come to Power, p. 68.)
As a matter of fact, Lenin was mistaken. Lenin, who was in hiding, later admitted that he was out of touch with the situation. Subsequent developments showed that the Bolsheviks could still win a majority in the Soviets and defeat the right-wing reformist leaders, and it was precisely this that guaranteed the success of the October Revolution. Now this seems so obvious that further comment is superfluous. Yet there was nothing automatic about it. Throughout the summer, it was touch and go, and Lenin’s worries were by no means without foundation.
The decisive turning point was precisely the moment when it seemed that the Bolsheviks had suffered a decisive defeat and initiative had passed to the counter-revolution. Throughout the summer of 1917, the pendulum continued to swing towards the right. On 18 July, General Brussilov was replaced by General Lavr Kornilov, an adventurer who, unlike most other members of the officer caste, was not an aristocrat but the son of a Cossack smallholder. Personally brave, Kornilov was also a maverick with a habit of disobeying orders. Narrow in outlook and politically illiterate, he had the soldier’s solution to all problems: There was nothing wrong with Russia that could not be solved by a whiff of grapeshot and the crack of an officer’s whip. Of him it was remarked that he had “the heart of a lion, and the brain of a sheep”.
Echoing the central demand of the counter-revolution, Kornilov insisted on the reintroduction of the death penalty at the front, where, in practice, he had already introduced it by ordering deserters to be shot. As a condition for accepting the Supreme Command, Kornilov dictated terms to Kerensky. In addition to the death penalty, he demanded the prohibition of meetings at the front, the disbanding of revolutionary regiments and an end to the powers of soldiers’ committees. Later, these demands were broadened to include the restoration of the death penalty for civilians, the imposition of martial law, and the banning of strikes in defence industries and the railways, on pain of capital punishment. This was a finished programme for a counter-revolutionary dictatorship.
For his part, Kerensky did not disagree with any of this, except maybe the timing. His main disagreement with Kornilov was that there could only be one Bonaparte, and Kerensky was determined to reserve that role for himself. However, personal rivalries did not prevent Kerensky from entering into contact with Kornilov and participating in the plot. This has led historians like Orlando Figes to assume that Kornilov never intended to overthrow Kerensky and install himself as dictator, but only to save the Provisional Government from the Bolsheviks. But Figes’ own researches contradict this argument. He writes:
None of which is to deny that many of Kornilov’s supporters were urging him to do away with the Provisional Government altogether. The Union of Officers, for example, laid plans for a military coup d’état, while a ‘conference of public men’ in mid-August, made up mostly of Cadets and right-wing businessmen, clearly encouraged Kornilov in that direction. At the centre of these rightist circles was Vasilii Zavoiko, a rather shady figure – property speculator, industrial financier, journalist and political intriguer – who, according to General Martynov, acted as Kornilov’s “personal guide, one might even say his mentor, on all state matters”. Zavoiko’s plans for a coup d’état were so well known that even Whitehall had heard of them: as early as 8 August the Foreign Ministry in London told Buchanan, its Ambassador in Petrograd, that according to its military sources, Zavoiko was plotting the overthrow of the Provisional Government. Nor is it to deny that Kornilov himself had his own ambitions in the political field – the cult of Kornilov, which he helped to generate, was a clear manifestation of this – and he must have been tempted by the constant urgings of his supporters, like Zavoiko, to exploit his enormous popularity in order to install himself as dictator. (O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1824, pp. 445-46.)
Figes bases himself on the fact that Kornilov, while his army was advancing on Petrograd, loudly proclaimed that he was doing so in order to ‘save’ the government from a ‘Bolshevik coup’ which was rumoured to be planned for the end of August. This ‘coup’ was an invention, and had obviously been cooked up as a justification for Kornilov’s action in ordering General Krymov to advance on Petrograd. That is a pathetic line of argument. One does not have to be a genius to see that Kornilov was only using the well-known tactic of disguising an offensive action as a defensive one. Pretending to ‘save’ the existing government, he would place the latter at his mercy and then brush it to one side and install himself as dictator. This scenario is not even original. It is the well-worn path trodden by every would-be Bonapartist, from Napoleon onwards.
Kerensky, the other aspiring Bonaparte, attempted to do a deal with Kornilov through his emissary, the Octobrist Duma deputy VN Lvov. But Kornilov told Lvov that he was demanding dictatorial powers for himself. There was no room for a second Bonaparte! Only at this point did Kerensky denounce Kornilov’s ‘counter-revolutionary conspiracy’ to the cabinet. Kornilov was ordered to withdraw his troops. If indeed he was only acting to save the Provisional Government, then it is not clear why he did not take orders from it and retire to barracks. Instead, he announced his intention to ‘save Russia’ from a government which was now under the control of the Bolsheviks!
On 25 August General Kornilov began his advance on Petrograd. This was a sudden and sharp turn in events, which is one of the main characteristics of a revolutionary period. And here we see the importance of tactics, which by their very nature must be flexible, such that a revolutionary party can change course within a question of days or even hours, if necessary. The question was posed point-blank: what attitude should the Bolsheviks take in the conflict between Kerensky and Kornilov? Despite the counter-revolutionary and repressive policy of the Provisional Government, it was necessary to join in the struggle against the open forces of reaction represented by Kornilov. This was understood instinctively by the workers, including the Bolshevik workers of the Vyborg District who were the first to rush to the defence of Petrograd.
Alarmed by this turn in events, the reformist leaders in the Soviet Executive were compelled to issue a call to the workers to defend the revolution. The Bolsheviks were invited to participate in the Committee for Struggle Against the Counter-revolution. Bolshevik leaders, including Trotsky, were released from prison, where they had languished after the July Days. Immediately, the Bolsheviks accepted the offer of a united front, and energetically set about combating the counter-revolution. However, the Bolshevik policy in no sense signified support for the Provisional Government. As Lenin explained:
Even now we must not support Kerensky’s government. This is unprincipled. We may be asked: aren’t we going to fight against Kornilov? Of course we must! But this is not the same thing; there is a dividing line here, which is being stepped over by some Bolsheviks who fall into compromise and allow themselves to be carried away by the course of events.
We shall fight, we are fighting against Kornilov, just as Kerensky’s troops do, but we do not support Kerensky. On the contrary, we expose his weakness. There is the difference. It is rather a subtle difference, but it is highly essential and must not be forgotten. (LCW, To the CC of the RSDLP, vol. 25, pp. 289-90.)
Lenin stated that the Bolsheviks would use Kerensky as a ‘gun rest’ to fight against Kornilov, and then, when they were strong enough, they would deal with Kerensky:
We are changing the form of our struggle against Kerensky. Without in the least relaxing our hostility towards him, without taking back a single word said against him, without renouncing the task of overthrowing him, we say that we must take into account the present situation. We shall not overthrow Kerensky right now. We shall approach the task of fighting against him in a different way, namely, we shall point out to the people (who are fighting against Kornilov) Kerensky’s weakness and vacillation. That has been done in the past as well. Now, however, it has become the all-important thing and this constitutes the change. (LCW, To the CC of the RSDLP, vol. 25, p. 290.)
This is the essence of Lenin’s tactic throughout 1917: not to attack the reformist leaders directly, but to outflank them, to attack the main enemy, the landlords and capitalists and the reaction, and to show in practice that the reformists were incapable of fighting reaction, incapable of acting decisively in the interests of the workers and peasants.
Here was a classic example of the Leninist policy of the united front in action. The Bolsheviks threw themselves energetically into struggle alongside the Menshevik and SR rank-and-file workers and soldiers who had earlier believed the slanders about ‘German agents’. They proved in action that they were the best fighters against the counter-revolution, and thereby laid the basis for winning over the mass of workers and soldiers who had hitherto backed the reformist leaders.
There can be no doubt that the participation of the Bolsheviks was decisive in defeating Kornilov. Even the anti-Bolshevik Figes admits that:
The Committee of Struggle represented a united front of the whole Soviet movement. But it was effectively dependent on the military organisation of the Bolsheviks, without which, in the words of Sukhanov, it “could only have passed the time with appeals and idle speeches by orators who had lost their authority”. Only the Bolsheviks had the ability to mobilise and arm the mass of the workers and soldiers, and they now worked in close collaboration with their rivals in the Soviets. (O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, p. 452.)
Utilising revolutionary methods, the Bolsheviks mobilised the workers against the Kornilovites. On paper, the latter represented a formidable force. Their shock troops were the so-called Savage Division, recruited from warlike mountain tribes in the North Caucasus. But the movement of the reactionary troops under General Krymov soon ground to a halt. The railway workers sabotaged the trains, which were driven off course and into sidings, as the points were switched by an invisible hand. Once the advance was halted, the rebel troops were engaged by Bolshevik agitators, who even persuaded the Cossacks not to fight. The Savage Division was addressed in their own language by a delegation of Caucasian Muslims who happened to be at a Soviet congress in Petrograd at the time of the mutiny. Soon the rebel officers had been arrested by their own men. Krymov shot himself. The Kornilov revolt collapsed, like a wave breaking over a rock.
Marx once wrote that the revolution needs the whip of the counter-revolution, and that was shown to be true. What was intended to be the decisive move of the counter-revolution was turned into its opposite. The defeat of Kornilov gave a powerful impulse to the revolution. Everywhere the soldiers turned against their officers. Many were arrested by their own men. The most unpopular ones were shot. The soldiers’ assemblies voted for the immediate signing of peace, and the transfer of power to the Soviets. They also voted with their feet. Whole units disbanded, as the peasant soldiers returned to their villages. The arrival of so many radicalised elements from the front in turn acted as a stimulus to the peasant revolt that flared up in September. The revolution had entered its decisive phase.
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Louis Cavaignac was the French general who, as War Minister in the Provisional Government established by the French Revolution of February 1848, led the suppression of the Paris workers’ uprising in June of that year.